So What Made You First Start To Doubt?

As weird as it is, I think it was the attitude of my former "fellow" Christians that started me on the road to doubt. Even though I've got a bachelors in Physics and have generally held a belief in evolution and big bang cosmology for most of the believing stage of my life, it really wasn't science that brought up questions(cognitive dissonance at its best). I think I've always generally never had a connection with anyone in any church I had ever attended. Mainly since most Christians, especially in the south, are non-intellectuals. But I think it really started when I began listening to extreme metal. I couldn't understand how anyone could look down on something that I loved so much and felt so natural to listen to. I can't tell you how many people have told me that its "the devils music"(even though most of the lyrics are socio-political).

Of course later on I did my research and discovered how ridiculous my former beliefs were. So who or what started you on your path to disbelief?

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I was three and had spent the night with some friends of my dad. They got up to go to church before breakfast and took me with them. I had never been to church. I was very hungry and everyone lined up for "juice and crackers". I wanted some too and they said no God doesn't want you to have any yet. This didn't make sense with what my parents said about God, namely that he loved little kids. So I figured "what kind of god wouldn't let a little kid who was hungry have some juice and crackers?" That was the first seed of doubt. Of course it was a very long time before I became an atheist, but that first incident went a long way towards my views on Christianity.

I went through a period of being scared of going to hell though, thanks to some classmates who told me I was because I was never baptised. As a child, Christianity just never felt right. I remember looking at the sky and thinking in all of galaxy Hell and Heaven were it??? Then it dawned to me it might just be a lie. I wish I had been a little faster to drop all magical thinking. That didn't happen until I read George Smith's book about six years ago. I finished the book and thought "well crap, I guess I am an atheist."

I was raised in a strictly Protestant home. I was "saved" at the age of 4 maybe? By the time I was about 12 I had started to realize that there were holes in the story. I think the one that really got me was the idea that people who had never heard of Jesus would burn in hell just like those who had heard and rejected him. I said to my mother that a just god would never do that; he would make allowments for those people. She gave me some story about "God making himself known to everyone" that I still don't understand to this day.
From there I started trying to rationalize other parts of Christianity. When that proved impossible I ended up here: aggressively agnostic.

Unanswered prayers. Not only for myself, but all the misfortunate people out there in the world who have lost their battle with disease. They've prayed. Victims of hunger, war, crime. Innocent and guilty, specially the innocent ones. They've prayed. I really hate it when the reply is; God acts in mysterious ways...
And you say your God is all mighty, all powerful, all seeing? Bullshit.

It's a funny thing, I stopped believing in Jesus' teachings after watching Zeitgeist. Looking back, it wasn't the best documentary and it had more than its fare share of holes and misinterpretations, but it acted as a seed for thoughts to come.

I started doubting when I started seriously reading biology and science when I was much yonger. I actually tried to discuss my concerns with a priest. He told me not to read. It would "destroy my faith", he said. That guy did more to destroy my faith than any book. His answer was so shocking to me that I could no longer take people like him seriously. I kept reading and came across Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. I found that book so compelling as an explanation for how we became what we are that I went on to read all of Dawkins' books. Then, along the way I read Dennet and Harris and Hitchens. I read about the origins of the bible and other religious books. Finally I couldn't believe I had once even entertained the idea that all that religious crap could have any truth to it at all. It was scary at first to realise that I was not here for a purpose. That this was the only life I was going to get. But it was also liberating after a while. No guilt about sex or fear about death & hell. I was free to live in a way that brought fulfilment. I was free of the cognitive dissonance that had plagued me as a rational being. I realised it was up to me to make this life the best I could because there would be no second chances - this was not a rehersal for anything. I realised I could be a morally good person without religion. I came to realise that it was enough to be good just becasue it was good to be good. I also saw the extent to which religion is really about power and control and its own self perpetuation. I now feel so disgusted with religion I almost want to vomit when I see those idiotic street preachers or those Southern folk doing silly jigs and going gaga in their churches. Crazy stuff. And priests molesting children. middle eastern lunatics flying panes through buildings. It's all so pointless and wasteful. Thank goodness I left religion. I wish our whole species could leave it. The world would be a better place and the likes of me could get on with our lives unmolested by fanatics.

Well, at least that priest showed you "the light". The biggest weapon organized religions have is the relative ignorance of it's followers. Christian clergy don't call their believers "a flock" for nothing. Just like sheep being rounded up for slaughter they blindly follow along to their doom.

I wasn't brought up to believe any particular Christian sect. I was not baptised and I never went to a church until my older brother conned me into going to one to see my little nephew do something in one when I was a teen. As I got more into history I could see that humans committed all kinds of crimes in the name of their beliefs w/o having any proof that what they believed was true. It seemed stupid. The clincher was Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone could logically think that the horrors of that day were sanctioned by some man-in-the-sky is just so absurd that I became a vocal atheist on that day. Add things like the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, The Crusades, the Islamic military conquests of the Middle Ages and on and on and on and I realized that no diety with any sense would allow such insanity to go on willingly unless either A. He/She/It doesn't care at all about us or B. it doesn't exist.

Im not really sure i ever went through a period of doubt. to be honest im not sure i ever really believed. i mean my mother is religious but my dad always seams to just go along with it as though it is simply a cultural thing, as a matter of fact he used this as a justification to me on more than one occasion in my youth. In terms of me realising im an atheist, allthough at the time the word wasnt in my vocabulary, i guess it was my grandfather, also an atheist it turned out though i didnt know this at the time, who probably set the whole thing in motion. he is a firm believer in logic and the nessessity to question everything and he would always encourage me to think about everything i was told or did so one day when i was asked by my school teacher did i believe in god after only a moment of reflection i realised i couldnt and that was that. i was probably an atheist before that but i guess thats when i realised it. I was still a cultural christian until my mid teens even while i was openly an atheist , as evidenced by the occasional church reading which i justified to myself as an expression of my love of public speaking.

Ours was a Xian family, but a 'holday christian' sort, xmas, funerals, weddings, that kind of thing. I was sent to an anglican primary school. We were required to attend a church service on Friday mornings. The good thing was, i got the impression that the minister, who never seemed to actually do anything, sounded very unconvinced of what he was spinning. You can tell when people are bullshitting. The minister had a nice big house in a nice 'burb, a cruisy job that really required no talent or expertise, except for speaking in public, so why upset the apple cart. Christian or any religion, it's all sooo obviously silly, it amazes me that anyone would be loony enough to subscribe to it.

for me i was raised to be episcopalians and as i continued on with life i was always using pure logic to do what i wanted to do and as i grew more intelligent i just came to a conclusion that there is nothing after this, we are flesh and bone, the outcome of physics and the laws of nature. i guess my biggest hurdle was understanding what could have made something out of nothing. of course i don't know that answer still but i know it couldn't have been any form of consciousness. still sucks thinking that everything will be lost to me but id rather suffer that thought than be under a delusion of any kind

Well, it started with talking snakes. Then progressed to how were Adam and Eve to populate the planet without incest. Next came how big a boat do you need to put two of every plant and animal on earth with enough food and water to last 40 plus days. Then that Jonah and the whale thing and Moses and the Red Sea thing. And on and on. Now why don't snakes talk today? I know. God has a reason and we are not to question. Come on now. Even children are not dumb.